


dream a little dream

by labonnetouche



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, canon but with added magic, hipster dive that is Surrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:04:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13335018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labonnetouche/pseuds/labonnetouche
Summary: Jade’s silence lasts for only a beat, but it’s a beat Scotty recognises as the kind that’s about to be followed by a lie.





	dream a little dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lordsanga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordsanga/gifts).



> Darling M, I hope this is everything you dreamed it would be and to everyone else, I hope you don't mind that I've dipped my toes back into magical realism in this year's exchange!

_ What if you slept  _

_ And what if  _

_ In your sleep _

_ You dreamed _

_ And what if  _

_ In your dream _

_ You went to heaven _

_ And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower  _

_ And what if _

_ When you awoke _

_ You had that flower in your hand  _

_ Ah, what then?  _

_ \- Samuel Taylor Coleridge _   
  


‘Do not text him,’ says Jade, balancing the beer bottle between his knees. 

‘Who?’ Scotty huffs. His arse is slowly turning into two frozen blocks of muscle and fat  - turns out London isn’t any warmer than Sunderland once you get past 2am.

‘You know who.’ 

He didn’t know that Jade knew. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s got some kind of psychic powers like Woody, who always knows when you need a hug and how long for. Scotty would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t miss those hours curled up on Mark’s bed, no questions asked. 

Jade takes the phone from his hands and stashes it in his inside pocket. Clever boy, Jade. Brought a coat. Scotty forgot the rules up north don’t apply down here. Not that he needs reminding, with every night out ending up like a bloody Dada exhibition. Hipster hats left, right and centre, Jason’s acoustic cover of Crazy in Love, Rory trussed up like a market town Jean-Paul Sartre and the Tommy and Sam show a manual for why you shouldn’t work with your brother. Six weeks in the big smoke and already fag breaks are the easiest bit of the night. 

‘Takes one to know one,’ he tosses out, getting a wry smile as reward. He’s not been around long enough to press any further, but he knows Jade used to have someone, because it’s obvious to anyone who’s looked for more than thirty seconds. He suspects no one’s really looked at Jade in a while. The more he tries, the more he feels guilty for snooping on something. He has this energy about him, the kind of thing people are drawn to, an all things to all men kind of guy, and when the guys have all gone Scotty sometimes just wants to put his arms around him until he stops feeling so alone. 

Jade offers Scotty the bottle and he blinks, watching the silhouette of a man scramble up Jade’s arm, running up a hill until his journey takes him above the line of the shirt sleeve. He shakes his head, trying to clear his vision, but it tumbles out before he can edit himself. 

‘Jade,’ he blurts. ‘‘Did your tattoo just… move?’

Jade’s silence lasts for only a beat, but it’s a beat Scotty recognises as the kind that’s about to be followed by a lie. It doesn’t matter what he says, something like  _ how drunk are you, boy from the north?  _ It matters now that there’s a secret somewhere in his new home, a secret maybe everyone else is in on. He presses the heel of one hand to his eye, and lets out a shaky little sigh. A siren sounds a few streets away. Someone somewhere needs help. The thing about London is, chances are it’s not someone his mam’ll know any more. 

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Jade says gently. Scotty looks over at him, bemused, and Jade reaches out to rest a hand over his knee.    
  


He doesn’t, in the end, get used to it.

The dressing room, at least, he can get into - there’s an ebb and flow to it all, to the way someone always asks Rory what the next chapter of Being and Nothingness has been like, and he just tells them like he’s running his own podcast, the way Rocky sits next to him looking every inch like he’s just stepped out of an old Hovis advert and laments how bright the sun seems up north in comparison. It’s surprising how quickly even the brotherly sniping fades into the background, another thing he doesn’t have to pay attention to in a city that screams so loudly every bit of sound seems like it must be important to someone. 

There’s a peculiar way of life they all adapt to, in this job. Life lived in the snatched days between games, in the nights after play’s finished. You finish in Cardiff, you come back, you start again, you work harder, you go out to the surrealist exhibition and you do it all over again. It’s what he does. It’s what he loves. He tries not to miss the lions on his chest. Most days it seems as though they were never there at all. 

It takes a few weeks more, but a crisp Wednesday morning comes, the kind of day they’re all glad they don’t have to go outside just yet, and Sanga sidles up to him with a conspiratorial glint in his eye. Scotty’s already wondering if he’s about to be let in on some kind of weird southern secret, like why they bring coats on a night out or why Sanga’s still able to carry on like he’s twenty-two, but no, it’s actually just an invitation to dinner.  _ Don’t tell the others, _ he takes pains to clarify when Scotty cautiously accepts. 

‘Why?’ he asks, tentative. 

‘Remember that joke? “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup”?

Scotty nods, wondering why everyone in this county speaks like they’re telling him a riddle, and thinking he should text Mark who’d know exactly how to solve them all, the daft sod. 

‘That’s why.’ 

‘What did he want?’ Rocky asks him over coffee, once they’re back in their civvies.

Remembering Sanga’s warning,  Scotty just shrugs. ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, lad.’ 

Mark snorts into his latte. ‘Bloody hell, Badge. You’ve gone native.’ 

  
  


Really, he’s a terrible cook. 

Delia and Mary Berry litter his shelves, misguided gifts from well-meaning relatives, a student cookbook pressed into his hands by his mam, convinced he’d get there if he just kept trying. He’s ruined three pans so far and he counts that as a success. 

There’s always so bloody much in London - not that he’s complaining, just that it’s easy to lose himself in the endless crowds, the day to day. That’s not who he is. Scotty’s never been a crowd guy. He’s looked in a mirror, after all. Soft blue eyes and a smile that somehow says  _ I’m an inoffensively cheeky chappy  _ and, apparently,  _ feel free to mug me off _ all at once. 

Would a lost-in-the-crowd guy be making a rum cake at 11pm on a Tuesday night with a CC game starting on Thursday? You bet he wouldn’t. 

Attempting to make a rum cake would probably be a fairer assessment. Without a proper tin, he found himself using the roasting dish instead, and before it’s even in the oven he has a sinking feeling and has another swig of the rum for luck. He knows Kumar likes the hard stuff, always seems to be at it while the rest of them are still on the pop, always sipping slowly like he’s trying to savour it. Scotty necks it, down the hatch to stop it burning so much. Probably merits to both. Staring down at his masterpiece, he concludes he’s going to need help stronger than baking powder and golden syrup. 

 

He texts Jade first, adding a picture of his creation for good measure, and then calls Ben. A steady background thump obscures his voice at first, leaving Scotty shouting  _ I need you to work your magic, lad _ so loudly he’s worried the neighbours will have got the wrong idea. 

‘It’s past your bedtime, Badge,’ Ben drawls once he gets outside, and Scotty grins. It’s good to hear his voice. 

‘You, um, you know that thing you can do?’ he asks, a butterfly or two in his belly. Ben doesn’t like to talk about it. He hears the noise Ben makes, a little  _ hmmph _ of agreement, and decides he’s got nothing to lose at this point - he’s already agreed to be best man. ‘Does it work over distance?’ 

Ben sighs. ‘What’ve you broken, you daft twat?’ 

‘A… a cake.’ 

‘A  _ cake _ ?’ 

‘Look, Sanga asked us round to dinner and - can you not interrogate us and just mend it, please, Stokesy?’ 

He can hear Ben laughing down the line, some kind of  _ two months down south and you’re as soft as them _ implied but unspoken. Ben promises he’ll try, and Scotty crosses as many fingers and toes as he can. For a moment or two everything is silence, save for Ben’s heavy breathing and the clock in Scotty’s kitchen ticking through the seconds, and then he kneels in front of the oven and through the glass, his cake has risen. Not much, but just beginning to lift from the depths of his ill-fitting roasting dish, and Scotty’s heart grows three sizes. 

‘I can’t make it taste any better, mind,’ Ben says into his ear, sounding sleepy already. Scotty asks if he’s going to be alright, if someone can get him home, and Ben tells him that Mark’s there, he won’t let him go home alone. There’s something in that Scotty can’t pick up on, something Ben’s not telling him, or won’t tell him, but he’s pushed too far already tonight. 

The doorbell goes, telling him Jade’s outside, and he bids Ben goodnight and promises he owes him one - hell, he owes him fifteen if he’s rescued this excuse for a host gift. Scotty finds himself pausing in the hallway to check his reflection, all flour on his nose and hair sticking up at odd angles. He tries to smooth it down without thinking about why. 

‘You called?’ Jade smirks, bottle of rum in his hands, that curious glint to his eyes. 

 

Scotty ushers him into the kitchen so he can open the oven door and reveal his creation. 

‘What’s the occasion?’ Jade frowns. 

‘Dinner. Um, with a friend. Yeah.’ 

Jade pours himself two fingers of his rum while he ponders that excuse for a moment. ‘The big man ask you round, did he? Secretive old so and so.’ 

Scotty stutters, feeling his cheeks go a little too red for his liking, the way they always do when he gets into the night and his body lets him down again, and then Jade’s in front of him, one eyebrow raised. 

‘You’ve got flour on your cheek,’ he says softly, brushing it away with his thumb. ‘What was it you needed me for?’ 

  
  
  


‘Just so you know,’ Jade mumbles, one arm behind his head as he sprawls on Scotty’s bed, ink snaking up the skin until the crease of his underarm. ‘I sleepwalk.’ 

Scotty nods solemnly and says  _ right _ , before lying half on top of him in an attempt to keep him still. They drank more, and then a bit more, and Jade tried to show him how to make pasta, but all Scotty remembers now is the part about not putting pasta in with anything else until it’s cooked. Jade’s giggling under him, the rise and fall of his chest jiggling Scotty in turn, and he starts to giggle as well. God, he hasn’t done this in a while. 

Something catches his eye from Jade underneath him and his eyes flicker down, distracted. The flowers on Jade’s chest piece are blooming, all of a sudden. Scotty’s only ever seen them in snatches, black and white petals, still as stone, but now there are pale pink flowers blooming from them, small buds underneath and fat petals on top, open wide, as though waiting for a bumblebee to come along and give them some new life. He sits up, then, settling his legs either side of Jade’s waist and murmurs,  _ Jade… _

‘Yeah?’ Jade can feel it, he must do. His left hand covers the bottom of his throat reflexively and Scotty starts to trade the outlines with one finger, up along the stem, a pause for each thorn, until he reaches the petals, each curled back a little, blushing and soft. 

‘What the fuck?’ Scotty’s mouth says, but his hand doesn’t stop moving, and Jade won’t look at him, or can’t, his head tipped back into the pillow, eyes closed. The hand that was on his throat closes around Scotty’s wrist, but gentle, not restricting, and Jade’s thumb rubs over his veins, speculative.

‘I don’t know,’ he murmurs. ‘Just happens sometimes since I got them. When I’m -’ 

Scotty follows the long-stemmed flowers with the tip of his finger as they begin to creep up the soft lines of Jade’s neck, blooming under his jaw. ‘When you’re what?’ he says, hardly daring to speak.

‘Happy.’

Scotty leans down and presses a kiss to a petal right on Jade’s throat, warm skin humming against his mouth until he smiles and follows the path of the flowers up to his jawline. 

‘Are you happy?’ he asks, breathless, and suddenly it really matters that Jade can say  _ yes, I’m happy _ right here, in his bed, and when he reaches up to run his fingers over Jade’s cheekbone his fingers are shaking.

‘Right now I am.’ 

Jade curls a hand into his still-floury hair and kisses him, and that’s that. 

  
  
  


He wakes up with the sun, his head on Jade’s chest, a small figurine of a monk resting on the other side, just above his heart. Scotty blinks, once, twice, and then shuts his eyes again. It’s too early to talk about why Jade’s brought a miniature monk into the house. He’s not even feeling hungover yet. 

He wakes up properly a little while later, to a litany of swearing from Jade, who’s sat up staring at the figure as though it’s about to fight him. 

Scotty turns back onto his side and rests his head on one bony bicep. ‘Where d’you find that weirdo?’

Jade’s jaw sets and Scotty’s stomach does a little backflip. 

‘It’s yours, isn’t it? Must have picked it up in my sleep.’ His chest is heaving and he runs a too-careful hand through his hair. 

Scotty scoffs, rubbing his eyes with one hand and manoeuvring his legs gradually out of bed. ‘I think I’d know if I kept a miniature monk statue in the house.’ He looks back and Jade is white as a sheet, so he reaches back and closes his hand around Jade’s wrist. ‘Hey, it’s alright. It’s probably only from the pub or something. It won’t hurt you.’

Jade hangs his head and wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. Scotty knows what covering something up looks like, but he doesn’t know what to do with that, so he falls back on the only thing he knows how to do. 

‘Tea?’ 

‘Coffee, please. If you’ve got any.’ 

‘What do you take me for?’ He chunters, swiping the monk to hide in the bread bin. No one looks there. Least of all him. 

 

Jade still looks like he’s seen a ghost when Scotty come back with two mugs. 

‘Didn’t know if you’d want it the Italian way,’ he chirps, but Jade doesn’t even snipe back, so he sets both of them down on the bedside table and eases himself down behind him, one arm curled slowly around his waist, chin on his left shoulder. He nudges Jade back against him, giving him somewhere to feel safe, the way he’d want if it were him that were upset. 

‘Mate,’ he says, as gently as he can manage. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re alright. You’re in my flat and I’m here, so nothing’s going to happen.’ He kisses Jade’s shoulder, as yet unmarked. Jade stiffens a little. Scotty feels the telltale flutter of his heartbeat under his fingertips. They sit for a moment, curled around each other in that way he was never allowed to before, and he can’t think why anyone would willingly deny themselves this. Jade’s so alive, the flowers are gone but there’s his heartbeat, the soft puff of his breath, the heat they produce between the two of them. They should get up, ‘we were having a moment, boss’ being no excuse for being late for training, but he can’t bring himself to move yet. Maybe nothing’s going on, but what if it is? 

Jade says something that sounds like  _ in for a penny _ , and Scotty presses his cheek to his back. 

‘I steal things,’ he says. ‘In my sleep.’ 

Scotty raises an eyebrow. ‘What, like some kind of sleep kleptomania? Is that why you sleepwalk?’ 

‘Not quite,’ Jade admits, but he’s got half a smile plastered on his face anyway. He goes on, telling Scotty that it’s like his tattoos, he doesn’t really get what happens or why it happens, he just wakes up with these things in his hands, in his bed, in his bathroom sink, these things that come from places he doesn’t really remember. Sometimes it’s all endless acres of beautiful garden and he wakes up with flowers in his hand and a smile on his face, but more often he remembers next to nothing and whatever he’s got with him is a mystery. Sometimes he can still see houses, people’s homes and their lives he’s been eavesdropping on, snatches of conversations, arguments, rings thrown in a fit of pique or hidden inside a cake. He tells Scotty he’s woken up with a ring on his finger and no idea how it got there, but worse, no idea where it was supposed to be.  

‘I.. I keep most of it,’ he says. ‘Don’t know what else to do with it.’ 

‘I was sleeping with Colly,’ Scotty says. ‘Y’know, since we’re sharing.’

He feels Jade’s stomach tense with a laugh, and suddenly it seems pretty funny to him, too. 

‘I didn’t laugh at you,’ he points out, and Jade responds that his story isn’t even funny, it’s just sad. 

Scotty thinks of Jade waking up with flowers on his pillow, curled on his side like always. 

‘I don’t think it’s sad,’ he says. 

  
  


Jade’s house is like he is, all high ceiling and this and that in every corner, like secrets waiting to be found if only you dig deep enough. He looks bashful when he shows Scotty around, as though there’s something to be embarrassed about, as though he almost didn’t want to let him into his space like this. Scotty’s careful to say the right things - praise his decorating, ask about the guitar (he never plays with Jason, it turns out - but some of Jade’s nerves rub off onto him, too, especially as he’s padding up the stairs to Jade’s bedroom, Jade’s fingers linked through his. 

‘I don’t normally tell people,’ he says quietly, looking out of the window. Garden, Scotty registered on his way in. Doing alright for himself. 

‘In for a penny,’ he says gently, and Jade rolls his eyes but smiles, beckoning him down to the floor by his chest of drawers.

The drawer itself is locked -  always, Scotty imagines - but Jade opens it carefully, turning the key three times and taking out the body of the drawer to place it on the carpet. 

‘These are all the things I’ve taken,’ he says, sounding almost detached from it now. Detachment means guilt, Scotty thinks, wondering how it is that he learned that, too. Jade picks up a cufflink, a sock, a small geode crystal, turning each of them over in his hands before placing them back exactly where he found them. 

‘What’s in that bag?’ Scotty asks, still trying to take it all in. 

Jade picks up a carrier bag - Waitrose, of course - and stifles a smirk. He unwraps it, careful not to let his bare hands touch what’s inside, and unveils what appears to be one of those crystal dildos, the kind that look like a banana, just made out of crystal and eerily cold. 

‘I don’t want to know who you nicked that from.’ 

 

It becomes like a show and tell in the end, Jade picking things up and telling what he can remember of the story that accompanies them, Scotty nodding along companionably, trying not to dwell on how surreal this makes the city seem. Ben was one thing, Mark another, but this was another level. He bites his lip before he starts nosing, trying to find out who else can do things or make things or fix things. He’s always wondered about Foakesy. 

‘This looks valuable,’ Jade mumbles, lifting up a small silvery locket with tentative fingers. ‘I didn't want to keep it. Looks like it might be important to someone, but.’

‘You don’t remember them?’ 

‘How much do you remember of your dreams?’ Jade shoots back, prickling just a little. 

Scotty holds up his hands, saying  _ alright, alright _ .  _ Pardon me if I don’t have weird superpowers _ . 

‘Piss off.’ Jade’s shoulders raise a little as he laughs, and Scotty reaches out to take his hand. He rubs his thumb over Jade’s, willing him to relax. ‘Sometimes I dream about home. If they’re from the other side of the world, then…’ 

_ There’s no hope _ isn’t a concept Scotty cares to be familiar with these days. 

‘I can’t believe you kept a fucking dildo.’ 

‘You try recycling a 6-inch solid rose quartz sex toy.’ 

  
  
  


Icing sugar, Scotty’s mum tells him, can cover any amount of sins. He leaves his cake out on the side, drowned in a thick layer of powder so white he’s almost afraid Sanga will think he’s offering him something other than a rum cake. Then again, he doesn’t know what he’s expecting from this meal anyway. 

 

_ Anything missing?  _ Jade texts him in the morning. 

It’s barely light, and Scotty casts about his bedroom with heavy eyes.  _ Mate it’s too early just tell me what you mean  _

The picture he receives is his own plate, the one with the chipped edge, the one he put the - the one he put the bloody cake on. 

_ Where’s my cake??? _

_ No idea. Just had the plate in my bed  _

 

The cake, of course, is on the counter top, its edges slightly crumbling in a way that makes it look like it’s giving up and sliding outwards. 

_ You took me fucking plate  _

_ I was asleep! _

 

After that, it’s as simple as Jade bringing it round and well, once they’ve got to that point, it seems rude not to ask him over to dinner as well. Sanga, somewhat suspiciously, has three places set at his table, filled with some things Scotty recognises and some he doesn’t.  _ Samble _ , he thinks he hears Jade say, and latches on to it.  _ Samble and dhal.  _ It’s probably the nicest thing he’s ever put in his mouth. 

‘Still working your magic I see, old man,’ Jade says through a big mouthful. Scotty’s eyes snap open and he looks around, blushing. Sanga swats Jade’s hand away from the samble bowl and not for the first time Scotty feels like he’s not being told the full story. 

They walk back to the bus stop holding hands, Scotty’s spare holding the plate with one third of a deflated rum cake still on it, a sad piece of cling film holding the two together. He looks up at Jade, dimly lit by overly white street lighting, and wonders how it would be to be with him. Would he be always looking for the flowers to bloom to know if he was happy? Is that what happened to the one who left? If they left. Maybe the decision was taken out of their hands. There’s still this air of a burden he has to carry alone. God, he misses Mark sometimes. He’d know what to say. 

 

‘Going my way?’ Jade asks. 

‘That an offer?’ 

Jade raises an eyebrow and pulls him close as they come to a stop. ‘Call it a polite enquiry.’ 

Scotty steps up on tiptoe and kisses him, cold fingers curling into the hair at the nape of Jade’s neck. It’s as good an answer as any. 

  
  
  


He wakes up before his alarm, in his own bed, pyjamas on. The smell of coffee reaches his nose approximately three seconds before the confusion as to how there’s fresh coffee when he’s the only one home. 

When he opens his eyes, there’s a bunch of red and yellow tulips on the pillow where Jade must have slept. A piece of paper lies just underneath and he unfolds it.

 

_ What’s better than roses round your piano?  _

_ Tulips around your organ  _

_ Picked these last night. For you, I think x J _

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Just in case - for anyone who's having trouble with the joke, try reading it out loud. Also the joke Sanga references is 'Waiter, there's a fly in my soup.' 'Do be quiet, sir, or they'll all want one.'


End file.
